Group items tagged

"LDraw™ is an open standard for LEGO CAD programs that allow the user to create virtual LEGO models and scenes. You can use it to document models you have physically built, create building instructions just like LEGO, render 3D photo realistic images of your virtual models and even make animations. The possibilities are endless. Unlike real LEGO bricks where you are limited by the number of parts and colors, in LDraw nothing is impossible."

"Why use video games in the classroom as teaching tools? Let's be clear-we've come a long way from Asteroids and Space Invaders. The modern capabilities and designs of computer games provide endless opportunities for meaningful learning experiences. Used appropriately and effectively, technology can make a difference in students' lives and affect their attitude toward school in a positive way. So ditch the old stereotypes and misconceptions you may have about the ill effects of video games and reframe your perception in the light of using them to enhance learning. Gamification of classrooms isn't a new idea. The components of the gaming world lend themselves well to self-directed learning, because gaming taps into the variables which inherently motivate the desire for progress. In fact, using a set of constructs called game mechanics one could conceivably create situations that enhance learning by incorporating the kinds of motivating strategies found in today's best video games. Whether you choose to "gamify" your physical classroom all the way or only use video games as an occasional learning enhancement, making learning fun will positively reinforce students' experiences of school. Here are some suggestions on how to successfully use video games in the classroom."

"One of the best gifts you can possibly give your child is an education in computer programming. Not only is it a fun, intellectually-challenging pastime, but it's also a solid guarantee of a future career in an industry that not only offers competitive wages, but also promises to provide stable and steady employment. One of the best tools for teaching coding to kids is the Raspberry Pi. At $30, these are cheap enough for most parents to buy. Using the built-in GPIO (General Purpose Input/Output), they can attach electrical components, and build their own physical computing devices. Because you're unlikely to use a Raspberry Pi as your main computer, your children can experiment and play without the fear of causing damage to your system or your documents. But if you aren't a coder, and don't know your Python from your Prolog, you might not know where to direct your children to. If that sounds like you, don't worry. Here's five simple activities to teach your child how to code with the Raspberry Pi."

"In this tutorial we will be combining a basic circuit with paper craft exploring how a circuit works while applying this to a physical design idea.  This is a hands-on problem solving activity as learners need to think about how the circuit is connected so that the flower that lights up ensuring there are no short circuits."

The posting below looks at a new approach to evaluating teaching. It is by Carl Wieman a professor of physics and of the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. He is the founder of the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative (CWSEI) at the University of British Columbia and the Science Education Initiative at the University of Colorado. He is a Nobel Laureate in Physics and served as the Associate Director for Science in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Cwieman@stanford.edu, 650 - 497-3491. The posting is a condensed version of a substantially longer article that appeared in the January, 2015 issue of Change Magazine. http://www.changemag.org Regards, Rick Reis

"16Hertz, an educational electronics company based in New York City announces the release of their illustrated, graphic-novel style guide, "The Illustrated Arduino". The guide is over 75 pages long, and contains hundreds of hand-drawn illustrations that take the readers through getting up-and-running with electronics prototyping and Arduino programming.   Written by career educators and makers, Aditya Kumarakrishnan and Adiel Fernandez, "The Illustrated Arduino" is a comprehensive guide created to be easily accessible to readers of all experience levels looking for a way to jump into the world of microcontrollers. When the duo dove into the Arduino community, they had a difficult time finding a comprehensive, clear guidebook for beginners. Having taught programming, physical computing and design to students of all ages from middle schools to universities, they sought out to create a guide that is easy-to-follow, great to look at all while still being rigorous. "We set out to create the most beautiful, user-friendly, pedagogically sound and rigorous guide book for the Arduino in the world", says Aditya. They've released the guide under a Creative Commons license, encouraging the larger community to share and use its content freel"

"As parents and teachers, we encourage our kids to become well rounded people who love learning.   In our world of cell phones, ipads, and computers, it's easy for kids to become passive consumers of media and technology.   We, however, want are kids to be active, curious, and creative.   Since I'm a musician and a software engineer, I hope that my kids learn to express themselves emotively and become creative thinkers.   We're trying to foster a family culture where we are active, encourage tinkering, and building physical things with our hands.    With these ideas in mind, I wanted to share a great video I found by Vinnie Vrotny and Sheryl Peterson entitled "STEAM: Creating A Maker Mindset."   In this conference talk from the K12 Online Conference in 2013, they share their experiences encouraging a "maker" mindset in the Quest Academy .   Their school has a very unique class teaching design thinking to kids.    It's giving me lots of ideas for building a maker environment for our family.    In this class, Sheryl encourages her students to invent a creative design problem and solve it.   With the tools and support of the teacher, the kids are encouraged to build their design.    In some cases, the kids ask Sheryl to assign a problem to them.    The kids aren't used to having creative freedom to design and make.    In these cases, Sheryl encourages the students to keep thinking."

"Kids can learn the physics of hockey and aerial skiing, the engineering of the halfpipe and bobsled, the chemistry of snow and ice, and the math of Olympic greatness -- all from fabulous five minute videos featuring winter Olympics. Not only that, but kids can apply these STEM concepts into improving their own winter sports abilities and use the knowledge to experiment with science, engineering and math through play. NBC Learn and the National Science Foundation have released Science of the Olympic Winter Games 2010 and Science and engineering of the Olympic Winter Games 2014 to teach the science and engineering behind individual Olympic events. There are sixteen videos in the 2010 series and ten videos in the 2014 series. Each video is approximately 5 minutes long, and the 2014 series includes lesson plans, integration guides and ideas for hands-on investigations, as well."

"Michelle Joyce doesn't shy away from politicized science topics such as climate change. In fact, she works to equip seniors at Palmetto Ridge High School in Naples, Florida with the skills to accurately evaluate those topics on their own. Along with teaching chemistry and physics, she offers a class called "thinking skills" where students solve logic and math puzzles while also enhancing their media literacy. Students go beyond just learning about legitimate sources of information on the internet and delve into just how the information is put together in the first place. But teaching students those critical thinking skills only as they're about to depart for college can be too little too late. "It's a really hard thing to teach within the space of everything else that you need to teach in a classroom," Joyce said. "It's crucial that we teach it as early as we can." The internet has no shortage of dubious information; and the ability to evaluate health and science claims is a subset of media literacy. With the abundance of health/science content students may only see via social media, kids are ill-equipped to discern hype from real science."

"A new report is shedding light on the state of children's health in Canada and found that more and more kids are dealing with mental health concerns. The study, which was released by Children First Canada and the O'Brien Institute for Public Health, examined various health-related issues including mortality rates, poverty and physical health by using data from various sources such as Statistics Canada, The Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) and Health Canada."

"As I headed to South Dakota, I wanted to talk about digital literacy as it relates to the whole learner. I wanted to focus as much (if not more!) time on resources for helping our kids harness the power of digital tools to achieve their goals, to solve real problems and to do actual good in the world, as we did on resources for keeping them safe.  So, as part of a (digital and physical) BreakoutEDU experience on digital literacy, I created this image: "

"Many American teenagers try to put in a full day of school, homework, after-school activities, sports and college prep on too little sleep. As evidence grows that chronic sleep deprivation puts teens at risk for physical and mental health problems, there is increasing pressure on school districts around the country to consider a later start time. In Seattle, school and city officials recently made the shift. Beginning with the 2016-2017 school year, the district moved the official start times for middle and high schools nearly an hour later, from 7:50 a.m. to 8:45 a.m. This was no easy feat; it meant rescheduling extracurricular activities and bus routes. But the bottom line goal was met: Teenagers used the extra time to sleep in. Researchers at the University of Washington studied the high school students both before and after the start-time change. Their findings appear in a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. They found students got 34 minutes more sleep on average with the later school start time. This boosted their total nightly sleep from 6 hours and 50 minutes to 7 hours and 24 minutes."

"Nick Sigmon first encountered the idea of "grading for equity" when he attended a mandatory professional development training at San Leandro High School led by Joe Feldman, CEO of the Crescendo Education Group. As a fairly new high school physics teacher, Sigmon says he was open-minded to new ideas, but had thought carefully about his grading system and considered it fair already. Like many teachers, Sigmon had divided his class into different categories (tests, quizzes, classwork, homework, labs, notebook, etc.) and assigned each category a percentage. Then he broke each assignment down and assigned points. A student's final grade was points earned divided by total points possible. He thought it was simple, neat and fair."

"Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Bill Finger, Bob Kane, Joe Simon, Steve Ditko, Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, and dozens of other Golden and Silver Age visionaries produced superhero, romance, western, horror, and crime comics using the craftsman's tools of their day: paper, typewriters, pencils, brushes, inks, and dyes. From the 1930s until roughly the mid-1990s, comic books were produced almost entirely in this fashion, with a few digital blips along the way. But as electronic tools became increasingly affordable and powerful, the comic book creation process shifted from an analog process to a digital one. In contemporary times, there's a good chance that no aspect of your favorite title is physical until finished pages start rolling off a printing press."

"School life can often get hectic, as you juggle between classes, assignments, projects, good grades, all laced with extreme competition, constant up gradation, and race for perfection. It is therefore, not uncommon for students to go through phases of stress and anxiety, as they surf through their learning journeys. It's important not to brush off your stress as just exam pressure or derivatives of academics. Stress and anxiety in students, is as serious a problem as it is in adults. If unattended, it can lead to several physical and mental health problems including obesity, sleep apnea, depression, eventually effecting your development and growth. In a study conducted by the World Health Organization, 25% of adolescents in India face depression, and 8% suffer from anxiety. Learning how to manage stress, won't just help you avoid serious repercussions of it, but also give your mind some much needed space and time, to function and focus well."

"A few years ago, I began shifting to a play-based approach in my kindergarten classroom. Research extolled the physical, cognitive, social, and emotional benefits of play and called to mind Friedrich Froebel's vision of kindergarten as a place where play and learning go hand in hand.  As I made small changes in my classroom, I began to understand that play is a primary and integral mode through which children make sense of the world, and that it is essential to their development and well-being. In addition, it supports skills like collaboration, communication, and creativity. Offering play can feel challenging when mandated programs and standardized tests are requirements of many school districts, but play-based learning is an effective practice for deepening understanding and engaging children. The key is finding a balance between academic expectations and the developmental needs of young students."

"The value of technology, as Apple Education states, is in its empowering character, when individuals use it to extend their physical and cognitive limitations and transform their learning. Technology opens a world of limitless learning possibilities for persons with learning difficulties and in today's post we are featuring some of the important features embedded in iPad that can help complement learners' vision, hearing, motor skills, and literacy. To access these assistive features head over to your iPad home screen and click on settings icon, next click on General and select Accessibility and then turn on the features you are interested in. Some of the assistive features as lied out in Apple's guide include:"

"Teachers are notorious for taking care of everyone but ourselves. The coming summer provides a perfect chance to change that. Some of us will seek the luxury of a true physical, mental, and emotional break from the classroom. Others will leap directly into teaching summer school in order to cobble together a full salary. Or we'll attend more conferences and trainings in the next two months than in the last 10 put together. Every teacher, even those of us in the throes of summer school and professional development, should make time to answer an existential question: Who are we when we're not teaching? Here are four ideas for making the most of that oasis of time between the end of this school year and the beginning of the next."

"When someone mentions scientists, chances are good that the face that pops into mind is male: perhaps a picture of Albert Einstein or Neil DeGrasse Tyson, or maybe a more generic man in a lab coat. However, even when women were largely shut out of science, there were still groundbreaking women making discoveries, conducting experiments, and publishing research! And while school curricula and popular culture are slowly expanding to include women beyond a few notable favorites such as Marie Curie and Jane Goodall, many people - young and old alike - still often find themselves struggling to name even a handful of female scientists. Fortunately, with the increasing availability of great biographies for children and teens, we can show our girls that women in science make contributions every day! And, of course, these titles are just as important to share with boys because all kids need to know that science is for girls! With that in mind, we've showcased 25 of our favorite biographies of female scientists for young readers. From primatology to physics, the expanses of space to the vast floor of the ocean, these women made their mark and changed the way we see the world... just like the budding Mighty Girl scientists of today will one day! For fictional stories featuring Mighty Girl scientists and engineers, check our our blog post Ignite Her Curiosity: 25 Books Starring Science-Loving Mighty Girls."